Oil companies in the GCC have been accused of receiving kickbacks to award contracts.
According to media reports, Control Components Inc (CCI), a US-based firm supplying parts to the oil and gas industry, has confessed in a US court to having paid money in return for contracts.
An Associated Press report said that CCI accepted that it had bribed officials of various private and state-owned foreign companies in the UAE, India, China and Malaysia to win contracts.
CCI is based in Rancho Santa Margarita and makes valves for the energy industry.
The companyís Vice-President Flavio Ricotti, an Italian citizen, spent more than half a decade as the company's head of sales for Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Ricotti who was arrested in February in Germany has been extradited to the US to face charges.
He has been charged with telling CCI employees to give about $750,000 (Dh2754,600) in payoffs to officials in the UAE, Kazakhstan, India and Qatar in exchange for contracts. Ricotti is one of the six company executives suspended for paying kickbacks.
According to AP, the company was ordered to pay $18m in fines for making hundreds of corrupt payments in dozens of countries, resulting in $46m in profits.
Ricotti faces 25 years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines if convicted. Trial is scheduled to begin in November.
According to a Los Angeles Times report, CCI, paid a court-ordered $18.2-m fine within a week of its guilty plea.
Two other former CCI executives, Richard Morlok and Mario Covino, pleaded guilty to bribery charges in early 2009. As a part of their plea deals, both men agreed to co-operate with prosecutors. They are scheduled to be sentenced in February 2011.
The UAE, which has a zero-tolerance policy for corruption, has implicated several senior officials lately for financial mismanagement. Late last year, the Dubai Government introduced a tough law imposing heavy penalty and jail term of up to 20 years for those who misappropriate public funds.
On June 25 an Abu Dhabi businessman pleaded guilty to charges that he bribed Iraqi officials under the Oil for Food Programme to win contracts worth more than $10m.
The Lebanese and Canadian national Ousama Naamanwho operated several businesses in the UAE and acted as the agent of an American chemical company, Inospec.
He was originally indicted on August 7, 2008 and was arrested in Germany on July 30, 2009 and extradited to the United States.
On March 18, 2010, Innospec pleaded guilty to a 12-count indictment charging wire fraud in connection with its payment of kickbacks to the Iraqi government under the OFFP, as well as violations of the FCPA in connection with bribe payments it made to officials in the Iraqi Ministry of Oil.
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